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Description of THE DETAILS AND THE WHOLE
II. description ofTHE DETAILS AND THE WHOLE (UNITY AND EMPHASIS) 188. Every subject of description thus presents to the writer a complexity of details. It appeals with a multitude of suggestions to eye and ear. To set down all these would be both impossible and futile. He cannot write at all, much less compose, without selection. And the selection must be personal, not a mere record of the physical facts, but a conception from his own impressions. Finally, the details exist only for the whole. Either the choice is determined by the unifying impression desired for the narrative to which the descriptions are contributory, or the same unity of impression dominates in pure description. Else description lapses into formless catalogue. The prerequisite for unity and due emphasis is to remember always the point of view ; the mental point of view which is the writer's conception, and the physical point of view limiting the details which the writer, and therefore his reader, can see clearly at a given time and place (Examine in this regard the first passage quoted at § 171). By error in the latter, that is through such vagueness of his Own image as lets him forget what he can really see from a given point, a writer as well as a painter may confuse his suggestions. He may insert details which he knows to be there, but which, from the point of view fixed by him, are not visible or audible. This may be called the error of the false elaboration of background. It is impossible only when the writer's image is quite distinct. Since a reader is not likely to see the suggested image any more distinctly than the writer, distinct description can come only from constant realization. 187. But this is only an extension of the general principle of selection ; and certain details may fairly be said to have value in themselves. In description, more than in painting, the constant consideration of the whole effect does not preclude the insertion of some details merely because they are salient to all observers or characteristically local, or what we loosely call " picturesque " in themselves. These must never be felt to intrude, to disturb the whole impression ; but, on the other hand, to choose an impression that ignores them is sometimes felt to be artificial. In a word, description, though its final measure is artistic, makes more legitimate use than painting of the scientific interest also, of the interest of curiosity and novelty, the interest of the record. Since many well-approved descriptions prevail largely by this, by our interest, that is, in details that are locally peculiar or striking, it is hardly just to call this interest extraneous. Thus Fromentin's sketches of Algiers and the Sahara were dominated by his eye for the eternally human rather than the local and accidental ; but his written descriptions of these regions derive much of their charm from details which in painting he omitted. And, in general, books of travel, which contain the bulk of pure description in English, rely largely on what in painting is called genreand in stories and plays local colour. A story, to be sure, ought to have an interest above the mere interest in local peculiarities of habit and feeling, and the best stories are best because they are interesting to all times and places ; but even in story we expect the locality to be described at least clearly enough to put us into sympathy with that too. Even The Vicar of Wakefield, which relies on this very little, has a distinct flavour of locality. Genrepainting may be, as Fromentin says, a divergence from the ways of true art, and many genrestories are futile because they achieve nothing beyond — are hardly stories at all ; but none the less genre must always demand some thought in description. Thus the description of a New Orleans street, if the description be part of a story, and still more if it be pure description for its own sake, is fairly bound to mention details that are peculiar to New Orleans, details that would not be true of Chicago or San Francisco. Every place may thiis be individualized, and of course every person must be, under pain of failing to be a person. The mention of mule-cars, of latticed balconies, of the clatter of traffic over cobblestones, or its even grumbling over wood, of the recurring volleys of highpitched bells or the heavy single notes of low ones, of high stoops to brownstone blocks of houses, of gardens and foliage about English cathedrals or the lack of them about French cathedrals, — details like these help us to realize a place in somewhat the same way as thick lips, or eyes wide apart, or still better a nervous gait, or slow, deep speech, or any other physical habit, help us to realize a man (§ 157). 188. Of the same effect are allusions to history ; for the character of a place, its local colour, is very often an inheritance. Use of this field of suggestions is tiresome when, instead of allusion, it is bald reference or expository comment ; but this is rather the abuse of it than the use. Thus to interlard scenery with history is tolerable only in a guidebook, which is not in our sense descriptive at all, but expository. The facts of history must be presented in description just as the facts of observation are presented, by suggestion. The sense of immemorial antiquity, which Lafcadio Hearn desires for his description of the Japanese Dance of Souls, is suggested as follows : Those who sleep the sleep of centuries out there, under the gray stones where the white lanterns are, and their fathers, and the fathers of their fathers' fathers, and the unknown generations behind them, buried in cemeteries of which the place has been forgotten for a thousand years, doubtless looked upon a scene like this. Nay 1 the dust stirred by those young feet was lzfe, and so smiled and so sang under this selfsame moon, "with woven paces, and with waving hands. "-:– Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Chapter vi. , § v. Thus presented, — and such presentation implies brevity, they may even heighten the effect of the whole. 189. Some descriptions add details for mere love of the details, seek, that is, not only the impression of the whole and the indication of locality, but also what is vaguely called picturesqueness, the effect of details for themselves. In Landor's Pentameron, which is very largely description, each chapter fairly keeps a single tone and is fairly local ; but many of the details serve neither of these purposes. They are there simply because they are striking : She entered with a willow twig in her hand, from the middle of which willow twig (for she held the two ends together) hung a fish, shining with green and gold. — Second Day. The dropping of soft rain on the leaves of the fig tree at the window, and the chirping of a little bird, to tell another there was shelter under them, brought me repose and slumber. —Fifth Day. Of the same sort is the following: As they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft, yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in all the strength of noon. — THOMAS HARDY, Tess of the D' Urbervilks. Among poets the type of this habit is Virgil. Part of the charm of the dEneid is in detail that has little reason beyond its loveliness. Adspirant aurm in noctem, nec candida cursus Luna negat ;splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus. —"Eneid, VII. 8. The value of detail both for itself and as contributory to a single conception implies the value of observation. The masters of description see minutely. Whether they select many details or few, they have seen many ; and to see is for most of us the acquirement of patience. It often begins in a gift of nature ; but, whether more from nature or more from perseverance, it is always a habit acquired by practice. Only, the artistic view looks rather for the artistic relations, as the scientific view, the view so wonderfully perfected in Darwin, looks for the scientific relations. Both while they observe generalize, but in ways very different. The scientist scents a classification ; the artist scents another kind of import. The cry of a bird does not suggest to him a sub-species ; it expresses the solitary depths of the wood, or harmonizes with meadows in the twilight, or jars the silence of the lake. Thus the observer of literary bent, while he trains his observation to a precision as nice as the scientist's, does well to remember always that the accumulation of details is not in itself literary ; that the artistic value of detail is its significance. The better stored his memory with close observations of nature and man, the readier he, perhaps years afterward, to make any scene vivid. But, immensely valuable as it is in training, not in literature even so much as in science is the hoarding of observations an end in itself ; and merely to catalogue observations, though it may have some scientific value in aiding the classifications of abler minds, is not in any degree literary. Rather the student of letters learns to see many things only in order that he may the more surely choose a few. Multiplicity of detail is rarely the way of description, and this not merely because selection is necessary, nor because description is commonly incidental, but also because there is a natural difficulty in holding more than a few details together. Even the painter must unify by simplification, though his result is seen all together and all at once. How much more the describer, who, because he is obliged to present his suggestions one after another, must always be anxious lest the beginning be forgotten, before the end. I may tell you his eyes are pale blue, his features regular, his hair silky, brownish, his legs long, his head rather stooping (only the head), his mouth commonly closed ; these are the facts, and you have seen much the same in a nursery doll. Such literary craft is of the nursery. So with landscapes. The art of the pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse the inward vision, instead of labouring with a drop-scene brush, as if it were to the eye; because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the poets, who spring imagination with a word or a phrase, paint lasting pictures. The Shakespearian, the Dantesque, are in a line, two at most. GEORGE MEREDITH, Diana of Me Crossways, Chapter xv. Now to describe without much detail is, first to choose the few details that will be most suggestive of the whole, and secondly, to cut out of every descriptive sentence every word that is not descriptive. The first must be left as a general counsel, to be achieved by much practice. For what details will be the most suggestive of a given effect no one can tell but the man that conceives the effect ; and he can be sure only from habit. III. THE MECHANISM (COHERENCE) 192. The second counsel means to avoid explanatory interpolations (§ I so). When we had reached the bare little station we were refreshed by the sight of wooded mountains all around it, is a typical instance of description clogged by worthless lumber. All it means is, The sight of wooded mountains all around the bare little station was refreshing ; and it ought to bestill further reduced by combination with what follows. The refreshment from wooded mountains all around the bare little stationprepared us to enjoy the view of far blue peaks from the first ridge. This is the negative way of descriptive conciseness. The positive way is to charge each word with suggestion; instead of depending altogether on nouns and adjectives, to force contribution from the verbs too (§ 162). The best-stored mind has not adjectives enough for description. The exhaustion of epithets overtaking a coaching party in new country is typical of what happens to every student of letters very early in his practice. Happy he, if he learns then and there that the effort to make adjectives suffice is futile. From time to time a passing success is achieved thus by the sensational torturing of language. But the strain of this kind of writing is no more obvious than its failure. The surer way is to exact of each word its share. A waft from the pines darkening the hills about the station shanty stimulated us to laugh at the far glimpse of our own blue peaks from the first rise. This is better than the first sentence because it accomplishes more in the same space by cutting out the lumber ; but also better than the second because pines is more concrete and specific (§ 226)than wooded, waftand laugh thanrefreshmentand enjoy, stimulatedthan prepared. The description is both stronger and easier because nearly every word is suggestive. 193. These methods of conciseness, hold for description of whatever length. A description that is long simply because it is bungled is of course not worth considering. The only excuse for length is increased suggestiveness. Further, where it seems advisable or necessary to enlarge the scale, it is often advisable also to indicate a simple plan by which the details may be mentally grouped. The most famous instance of this device for clearness is the capital A by which Victor Hugo clarifies his long description of the field of Waterloo. Thus a description of a city from a height, as of Montreal from Mount Royal, may be clarified by some general suggestion of shape and the use of prominent buildings as points in a plan. But there is need of two cautions. First, panoramas are not often successful in description. Generally speaking, all that description can suggest of a large prospect it can suggest as well by the rapid impression of a first glance as by labouring with many details. We saw a broad plain, half sand, half pale grass ; on the rim by the Nile rose a pale yellow dome, clear above everything. That was the Mandi's tomb, divined from Gebel Royan, now seen. It was the centre of a purple stain on the yellow sand, going out for miles and miles on every side — the mud-houses of Omdurman. —G. W. STEEVENS: With Kitchener to Khartum, Chapter mi. Second, all detailed descriptions of large scope are at least as much expository as descriptive. This does not make them the less legitimate, nor does it relieve us from the occasional necessity of describing so ; but in general the expository in description must be strictly limited (§§ 146, 171), and it must never be felt to intrude. Even shorter descriptions, however, need the clearness of orderly arrangement; for even a comparatively few details may else be confusing. The device for clearness, like all other machinery, should not usually be apparent ; but the writer cannot afford to forget this part of his obligation. To this end the principal means has already been suggested (§ 186), a constant awareness of the point of view. It must always be remembered that the first view is only a general impression or the seizure of a single salient feature. Details, being seen afterward, should be described afterward. Of devices, one of the most common is contrast, as in Ruskin's description of St. Mark's. Equally simple and unobtrusive is to give the details, of a building for instance, from the bottom up or the top down. But all this may be summed up in the counsel to have an order, and to say as little about it as possible. 194. Of the methods, besides that of formal plan, for holding a detailed description together as a whole, the easiest and most natural is the narrative. By this is meant, not story, but the use of a narrative order of details in order to an easier employment of the descriptive force of the verb (§ 162). One of the simplest instances is the description of Robinson Crusoe's hut : I found a little plain. . . . Before I set up my tent, I drew a half-circle. . . . In this . . . I pitched two rows of strong stakes. . . . Then I took the pieces of cable, etc. 195. This exhibits also the danger of the method, the danger of letting the narrative parts, which for purposes of description are mere transitions, mere machinery, occupy too much space. "I went, " "we saw, " "took the train at half-past six, " "arrived later than we expected, " —all such as this must be cut out (§§ so, 172, 192). Description never needs to go, or arrive, or take a train, in order to be anywhere it pleases. If the journey be part of the description, if it be interesting in itself, well ; but if it be intended only as a means, let it be suppressed as entirely unnecessary. Books of travel are sometimes tiresome from this sort of clumsiness; the best books of travel use the narrative machinery with far better skill. A gentle splashing of water, which mingles with the rustling of the trees and the quiet echoes of the pavement, comes from the end of the court where its edge is a descent filled with high forest trees. — JoHN LA FARGE: An Artist's Letters from Japan, page 64. Our train skirted the great hill of Uyeno, and its dark shadow, which did not quite reach us. Monuments and gravestones, gray or mossy, blurred here and there the green wall of trees. . . . From the rustling of leaves and reechoing of trees we passed into the open country, and into free air and heat. In the blur of hot air, trembling beneath the sun, lay plantations and rice-fields ; the latter, vast sheets of water dotted with innumerable spikes of green. Little paths raised above them made a network of irregular geometry. Occasionally a crane spread a shining wing and sank again. —ibid. , pages 30, 31. the finest examples of the method is Sterne's Tourney (See the quotation at§ 150); and it is of the finest because the narrative machinery so constantly furthers the descriptive aim that it is never felt as machinery. 196. The large use of dialogue in Steme's exquisite descriptions shows also, and very strikingly, that description may borrow machinery, not only from narrative proper, but also from drama. And besides dialogue, which is formally dramatic, description may use very effectively another device that is, not formally indeed, but essentially, dramatic. This is the method of suggesting something by its effects upon the actors or bystanders. Just as we feel the madness of Lear through its effect upon Kent and Edgar, upon the fool, upon Cordelia, so we feel, more quickly than in any other way we could be made to feel, the doom written upon the face of the Ancient Mariner by the effect of that face upon the wedding guest, who "cannot chuse but hear, " and upon the pilot and his boy : I moved my lips —the Pilot shrieked, And fell down in a fit ; The holy Hermit raised his eyes, And pray'd where he did sit. Itook the oars : the Pilot's boy, Who now doth crazy go, Laughed loud and long, and all the while His eyes went to and fro. This is Stevenson's method of suggesting the appearance of Mr. Hyde. Direct suggestion by details — the hairy hand, the dwarfish stature suggested by the illfitting clothes of Dr. Jekyll — he uses too ; but his mair means of securing the impression of horror is throu the invariable effect of Hyde upon the various per that met him. Indeed, certain suggestions, as these of terror and horror, seem almost to demand this indirect method. For these, adjectives sound feeble, and even the cleverest choice of details sometimes insufficient. And even for less violent suggestions description may often rely on the dramatic method by effects. Not only may a man be described by his effects, but also a scene. Thus description of nature tells sometimes not so much what the writer saw, but how it made him, or the persons of his story, feel. The sunlit peace was now withdrawn almost to the horizon. As the sun reluctantly sank behind us, the nearer trees sighed uneasily ; and to the foot of the hill stole foreboding gloom. By this method nature may easily be bent to a mood. So soon as the warping is felt to be artificial, so soon, that is, as we become aware of the effort to harmonize scene and feeling as either deliberate or extravagant, our sympathy is turned to resentment. Ruskin, who invented for this emotional method the termpathetic fallacy, divides authors according to their attitude toward it into three degrees. Lowest he places those who use the pathetic fallacy as mere machinery, who use it, not because they feel at all, but because they think the literary convention of their time expects them to write of certain things as if they felt in certain ways. This may be called second-hand pathetic fallacy. Like all else that is trite and insincere, it should be abhorred by every honest artist. Ruskin's second degree is of those who warp what they see by force of their own real feeling, who "see falsely because they feel truly. " It includes the majority of poets and emotional prose writers. Description being in any case (though Ruskin would have denied this) the presentation not so much of nature as of the author's conception of nature (§ 147), it must always be coloured by the author's personality. If he be emotional, as the majority of authors are, his description will be emotional. But when he shows himself too emotional to be master of his expression, he pays the penalty of all extravagance. Rusldn's highest degree is of those few who feel truly and yet see truly, whose emotions, though greater than those of other men, do not warp their expression of fact. Here, of course, he places Shakespeare. He adds that when, at exceptional moments, Shakespeare does suffer himself to be carried away, the force of this rare pathetic fallacy is prodigious; and that it is the eminence of Dante never to be carried away at all, to preserve in the strongest emotion an almost literal accuracy. 199. This division of Ruskin's, though it proceeds from a mistaken view of truth in art, is suggestive of sound counsel. No student can safely try to describe in a tone of emotion that is not naturally his. The futility of most figurative language lies in the fact that it corresponds to no image in the writer's own mind. The first virtue of style is sincerity. And the danger is not so much that a young writer should be consciously insincere as that he should be so unconsciously. The force of literary environment is so great that sincerity is often the achievement of years. In order to speak out of his own eyes and his own heart a writer has first to find himself. Therefore he must never take his eyes from that goal. Further, there is no danger in studying descriptive methods, or any other literary methods, by imitation. So long as a man when he attempts to describe his own scenes is faithful to his own vision, he may study the descriptions of other scenes, day in, day out, with nothing but profit. Such study is the study of methods, which are open to Everyone ; the danger is to borrow personal tricks of words, forgetting or ignoring that they are not transferable. Finally, it is but wise to chasten emotional expression by the habit of observation. There is not commonly so much danger of seeming emotionally below an extraordinary situation, as of seeming emotionally above an ordinary one. In any case the impression of emotional height is not gained by devices of language without the writer's having known the height himself. Now flights are for few men and rare times. They are not for anyone in our time a habit. To write as if they were, and in general to write above one's feeling, is to begin wrong. That a man should not pretend to be what he is not, applies with peculiar force to the assumption of an emotional style. If a man be unemotional, any other guise of expression will be grotesque ; if a man be emotional, his style need not for that be Asiatic. Rather, if he is to express his emotion with real force, he must learn first to repress it. IV. THE TERMS 200. It is already sufficiently evident that the study of description, as of any other kind of composition, leads inevitably to the study of words. The study of words, that is, of words and phrases separately, in contradistinction to their larger combinations, is the subject matter of Part II. Meantime, the natural anticipations of this study in its bearing on artistic composition may be summed up here. The artistic method of suggestion being essentially by the concrete (§ 146), description should studiously avoid abstract terms. The abstract is summary, not usually suggestive. What bird is described in the following ? The bird was not far away in the bushy wood, and its singing was most charming. It trilled and gurgled and whistled with many quick and unexpected changes. The song had the freedom and strength of noble music. Some of the notes were of the utmost purity and clearness, and they seemed to penetrate into all the region about. — CLIFTON JOHNSTON:Among English Hedgerows, pages 46-7. The concrete method proper to description leads often to figures of speech (§ 228), but not necessarily. It is an error to suppose that description must be figurative. Not only may it be concrete and specific without figure, but the specific mention of concrete details without figure is in the average run of writing surer. Do not eschew figure ; but beware of leaning on it too heavily. Let the main work of suggestion be by the simpler way. Figures must usually be very good to be good at all ; and they have their happiest effects when they are infrequent. Again, it follows from the principle of artistic truth (§ 147) that descriptive precision means aptness to the conception rather than accuracy to the facts. Artistic precision is not necessarily scientific precision. The latter demands only a dictionary ; the former demands that the dictionary be searched for that one of a group of synonyms which is nearest the desired tone. Stated technically, descriptive precision looks as much to the connotation (§ 222) of words as to their denotation. Finally, a large part of the effect of description comes, not only through suggestions of sound, but through suggestions by sound. That the sounds of words are effective as well as their meanings (§ 230) is none the less true because it ought not to preoccupy novices ; and nowhere is it more obvious than in description. The last and finest touch of descriptive art is that the sounds of the words should delicately further the harmony of the whole. V. THE LITERARY FORMS OF DESCRIPTION From its very nature description can hardly have literary forms of its own. As the most essentially dependent kind of writing, it is incorporated in the forms of the other kinds. Besides supporting stories, it often supports essays ; and when the expository end is sought largely through the concrete the piece is often called a descriptive essay or a sketch. Such are some of Hawthorne's short pieces (called Tales) and the introduction toThe Scarlet Letter. Such also are many " essays " of Lamb, Hazlitt, Thackeray, and Stevenson, and, in a thin guise of story, Henry James's Brooksmith. In books of travel and letters the form is usually narrative, the content descriptive and expository in proportions infinitely variable, all the way from Dr. Johnson's Scotland to Lafcadio Hearn's Japan. Books of the form of Stevenson's Across the Plains are in effect series of descriptions, the incidental exposition smaller in proportion as the aim (e. g. in Travels with a Donkey) is more artistic ; others are in effect series of expositions livened by incidental description. Matthews's Vignettes of Manhattan, Janvier's Colour Studies, George Wharton Edwards's Thumbnail Sketches show that pure description is still practised ; but it has never been common. Category: Description